May 2011 Brides Magazine, By The Numbers

I was scheduled to deliver a movie review to y’all today, but to my amazement I didn’t receive promotional tickets to EITHER of the wedding movies that opened in theaters last weekend. Maybe Something Borrowed and Jumping the Broom would have held up a little better against Thor if they’d attempted to court my tens of readers! But they missed that boat, so in lieu of a movie review, I’ve got another magazine review for you. Enjoy!

# pages: 298
# pages of advertising: 196 5/6

# pages featuring some content regarding the Royal Wedding: 43
# of pictures of Kate Middleton: 3, plus one cartoon
# of pictures of a model pretending to be Kate Middleton:13
# distinct pieces of sapphire jewelry on these pages:  15

Average price of makeup in the Brides Magazine Beauty Awards feature: $24.79
Average price of makeup picked by Brides readers: $12.29
Average price of fragrances selected by Brides Magazine: $75.56
Average price of fragrances picked by readers: $59.30
Average price of hair products selected by Brides Magazine: $23.81
Average price of hair products selected by readers: $8.45
Average price of skin products selected by Brides Magazine: $23.90
Average price of skin products selected by readers: $19.09

# of “50 wedding websites you can’t live without” that I do not write for: 50 [See above re: delusions of blograndeur]
# of “50 wedding websites you can’t live without” that are about anything other than peddling wedding stuff: 0.

Guest Post: Magazine Re-review

In case you missed it (I did, because I was up to my nose in invitations), I wrote a guest post for So You’re EnGAYged about the representation of gay couples in wedding magazines.  Or (spoiler alert) the total lack of representation.

Enjoy!

April 2011 Brides Magazine, By The Numbers

# pages: 322
# pages of advertising: 207 2/3

# pages in Alfred Angelo Disney Fairy Tale Wedding ad block: 13
# Disney Princesses represented: 7 (Belle, Aurora, Ariel, Snow White, Jasmine, Cinderella, Tiana)
Sole Disney Princess on single-page spread Just guess. [Spoiler: the black one.]
# models of color used to represent Jasmine & Tiana: 1
# white models used to represent remaining five white princesses: At least 2

# models in Bill Levkoff ad spread: 1 or 2, depending on which of my friends you ask.

# of friends I asked: 9 (we were about evenly split of the “is that the same person?” vote. I vote there are two people).
# of dresses pictured: 12
# of distinct headshots photoshopped onto pictured dresses: 8
Creepiness factor: 97

# of bridesmaids dresses pictured in ads and editorial content: 90
# of full-length bridesmaid dresses pictured: 24
# knee or cocktail-length bridesmaid dresses pictured: 66

Average # lbs. lost by brides in “The Weight is Over” Feature : 49.5
Average lbs./week lost by these brides: 5.275
% these brides who subscribed to paid dieting programs to lose weight: 100%

# of “things only a wedding planner knows” I totally already knew: 7
# of creative ways to make a paper cone I need to know for my wedding: 0
# of creative ways to make a paper cone now cluttering my brain:15

March 2011 Brides Magazine, by the Numbers

For those of you wondering why this is almost an entire month late, don’t look at me, look at the CONSPIRATORS!  But better late than never, right?

# pages: 378
# pages of advertising: 283 1/3
# pages in longest uninterrupted run of advertisements: 66 [SERIOUSLY. That’s a solid 1/4 inch of magazine.]

# images of brides with visible faces: 194
# pictured brides who are undeniably smiling:42

# pictured brides who are arguably smiling:49

The dedication to SMIZE makes this one count.

Activate Human Emotion Simulation Program File: Joy

# pictured brides with dead or stoned expressions: 59

Zombie Taylor Swift

"My flower-scope lets me see music"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# pictured brides who look sad, angry, scared, or are expressing some other negative emotion: 44

I wish Dad were alive.

UGH, I TOLD the limo driver not to take the 405.

 

No one will find the body before I say 'I do.' RIGHT?!

That Daytime Emmy is MINE.

“Normal” symptom of bridal brain covered in “No, You’re Not Crazy”: “You want to kill…everyone.”
Amount that surprises me given the emotions roundup above: ZERO.

CONSPIRACY!

Folks, it is February Seven-freakin-teenth and I haven’t gotten the March issue of Brides yet.  Now, there are plenty of rational explanations for this, like there is no March 2011 issue of Brides or  that my free subscription was only for six months, not a year.

But those explanations are boring! So let me throw out this idea: Condé Nast cut me off because of my CRACK REPORTING!

Yes, the dying medium of print is fighting back against my subversive blog tallies.  “If you want to make fun of us, Little Miss HitchDied, you’re going to have to PAY NEWSSTAND PRICES to do it! MWA HA HA!”

Next thing you know they’ll be cutting down trees to print more advertorials about honeymoons in Belize and they’ll “accidentally” fell a gigantic sequoia on my roof. [If you are thinking, “Robin, don’t you live in a totally paved-over neighborhood in Pittsburgh?” I envy your naiveté.   There are powerful PRINT MEDIA forces at work here.  No one is safe!]

Either that or the Post Office is diverting my fun mail because I’ve wasted so many postal worker hours with my undeliverable save the dates [Return-to-sender save the dates were literally THE ONLY THING in our mailbox today. Embarassing!]

But seriously, is there a March 2011 issue of Brides?

February 2011 Brides Magazine, by the Numbers

# pages: 422
# pages of advertising: 314
# pages of advertisements for bridal gowns: 189 1/3
# pages of editorial content focused on bridal gowns: 23
# images of bridal gowns in issue: 280
Total % pages in the issue pertaining to bridal gowns: 50.3%

Price per unit of the high-end invitation suite:$13
Price per unit of the low-end invitation suite: $2.28
Price per unit in our invitation budget (not including postage):$1.60

% of brides who do not get pre-wedding cosmetic procedures, based on quick glance at horribly designed pie chart on page 392:0%

Number of minutes the three scientists in my house have argued about how to interpret that chart: 14 and counting…

January 2011 Brides Magazine, by the Numbers

# pages: 336
# pages of advertising: 221.5
# additional pages of actual content in this issue vs. the December issue: 32.5 [Maybe they had a new year’s resolution to be more of a magazine and less of a glossy collection of advertisements?]
# pages it took to surpass entire December 2010 issue in images of brides of color: 68 [And to be less racist?]
# pages of content focused on grooms: 4 [And even a tiny bit less sexist?!]
# pages of content that consider budget concerns: 14 [And more relevant?]
Cost of single cupcake leading off “Cupcake Nation” feature, including liner: $8.40 [Er… maybe not.]
Slice of the budget of the “average” wedding allotted to groom’s formal wear: 0.9%
Slice of the budget of the “average” wedding allotted to the brides’ ensemble: 5.8%
Slice of the budget of the “average” wedding allotted to flowers: 7.1%
Amount of tears I would cry if I had to spend more money on flowers than I did on my wedding dress: 910
# of “15 (other) reasons to get married” that conceivably actually require marriage: 4
# of “15 (other) reasons to get married” that make me shout, “SEXIST!”: 4, plus “Reason 16: He can go through life not asking for directions—because you’ll do it for him.” [Gah! Even ignoring feminism for a moment, WE LIVE IN THE AGE OF THE GPS!]
Number of minutes I believed Brides had turned a corner and was becoming a less worthless publication:35.

December 2010 Brides Magazine, by the Numbers

# pages: 288
# pages of advertisements: 206
# of remaining 82 pages of actual content devoted to engagement rings, which presumably are in the rear-view for most of Brides’ readership: 8
Price of ring leading off the feature: $1,100,000. [That was not a typo. One million, one hundred thousand.]
Price of “less” in the “luxe and less” comparison of two similar rings: $6,679.
# images of white brides: 141
# images of brides of color: 6
# of animals hanging out with “modern princess” in “Once Upon a Time” photo spread: 5 (piglet, giant butterfly, fawn, horse).
Estimated height of modern princess’s updo: 18″
# suggested presents in “Gifts for Your Girls” feature: 41
# suggested presents that hurt my brain: 4 (yoga mat with mp3-player dock, $40; tiny serving trays, $5 each; ugly ring suggested to add “sass to a work outfit,” $38; $68 flip flops, $68.)

November 2010 Brides Magazine, By the Numbers

# pages: 330
# pages of advertisements: 245 2/3
# pages of “advertorials”: 1
# of remaining 84 and 1/3 pages of content devoted to wedding accessories for your dog: 8
Average price of dog accessories featured in this photo spread: $185.83
Average price of dresses from “Head Turning Dresses from $400 (Honest!)” photo spread: $3,316.44
# of dresses in this photo spread priced under $1,000: 1
# of sticker tabs labeled “hottest,” to mark up magazine, provided by Pantene®: 5
# of un-skinny people pictured: 2
# calories in coyly-referenced meal of celery and Fresca: 19
# real weddings featured: 1 (Sarah and Jonathan)
# imaginary weddings featured: 1 (Annika and Derek)
# of episodes of Parks & Rec I watched while compiling this list of figures: 3.